Friday, September 14, 2012

Another Use for 3D Printing: Building A Beak for a Bald Eagle

Because the technology is only now ramping up (after a twenty year gestation) the results are still a bit crude.
As advances are made in sintering there will eventually be stuff made, not prototypes but actual stuff, from steel or copper or...

Two European companies — EOS of Germany and Arcam of Sweden are ahead of the pack in the metalworking part of the biz.

From Grist:Injured bald eagle gets new 3-D printed beak

Photo courtesy of Birds of Prey Northwest.

Sometime in 2005, Beauty the bald eagle was shot in the face by a
poacher, which damaged her beak badly enough that she couldn’t eat on
her own. Animal rescue workers found her before she starved to death,
and volunteers at the nonprofit group Birds of Prey Northwest nursed
her back to health via tube-feeding and, later, hand-feeding with
forceps. But it became increasingly clear that her beak was never going
to grow back — meaning that Beauty would never be able to feed herself.
She was on track to be euthanized.

But raptor specialist Jane Fink Cantwell, who dresses like Indiana
Jones, refused to take “dead bald eagle” for an answer. She joined
forces with mechanical engineer Nate Calvin of Kinetic Engineering Group, and together with other scientists, engineers, and even a dentist, they designed a nylon polymer beak that would perfectly replace Beauty’s lost upper mandible....MORE